Google+ gets first UK TV advertisement, ad budget hits $12m

By Pradeep Chandrasekaran on 03/28/2012

Google+ users have been on the defense against its critics who have referred to the social networking site by the search giants, as a ghost town for some time now. Now it seems, Google themselves might be coming to the rescue with its first TV ad campaign in the UK. Online reports suggest that in Google’s first TV-based advertising campaign in UK the starred “Hangout” feature which is offered by Google+ will put in an appearance. The ad will also cheekily highlight that Facebook and Twitter don’t have the feature with its tongue-in-cheek tagline, “That’s the plus”.

A TV ad for Google in the US is nothing new but for UK this is a first. The ad which highlights the “Hangout” feature and spending time with family and friends also comes with a trickling of the “Circles” feature in the advertisements as opposed to the light-hearted American version which showed Muppets “hanging out” during the Academy Awards. Although Google announced in January that it had hit 90 million users with a daily engagement rate of 60%, the search giant will definitely have its work cut out as ComScore figures show that Facebook takes up 18% of UK users’ entire time while Google+ only managed to notch up 0.01%. Let us know what you think about efforts being put in by Google to help boost its social networking sit with a comment below. Do you use Google+?